Traditional non-invasive blood pressure monitoring devices operate by inflating a cuff to a pressure well above a patient's systolic blood pressure. Because the systolic pressure is usually not known prior to inflation, the cuff must be inflated to such a high pressure to ensure that the patient's arterial blood flow is completely occluded. Once well above systole, the cuff is deflated and the systolic and diastolic pressures are calculated based on signals provided during cuff deflation.
Some systems and methods have been developed to determine blood pressures during cuff inflation. These methods, however, are generally inaccurate and/or slow. Consequently, such methods cannot provide a commercially useful determination of systolic pressure that must meet certain regulatory standards.
Other systems and method have been developed to automatically take a sequence of systolic and diastolic blood pressure measurements, and to estimate blood pressure based on an average of the measured systolic and diastolic blood pressures. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,602,199 (“the '199 patent”) teaches a system configured to take a predetermined number of consecutive systolic and diastolic blood pressure measurements of a patient. The system of the '199 patent includes a blood pressure cuff, a sensor, and a control module configured to determine an estimated blood pressure of the patient based on the sequence of measurements.
While the system of the '199 patent may provide a rough estimate of patient blood pressure, such systems are typically characterized by several significant drawbacks when used in patient monitoring environments. For example, such systems typically take measurements over a span of several minutes before determining the estimated blood pressure value. In hospitals, physicians' offices, clinics, and other like healthcare facilities, however, such a long lead time prior to determining the blood pressure measurement may result in extended patient wait times and an overall decrease in facility efficiency. In addition, such systems are generally not configured to adapt to variations in patient blood pressure occurring throughout the sequence of measurements. As a result, the blood pressure estimate provided by such systems may be inaccurate.
The various exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure are directed toward overcoming one or more of the deficiencies of the prior art.